AEW Double Or Nothing 2025: Biggest Winners And Losers

AEW Double or Nothing has come and gone. The night was jam-packed with title matches, tournament finals, and literal anarchy. Many people came out of it looking good, and some of them came out of it looking not so good. 

Now, we've already covered "what happened," and that can be found on the results page, where there's a detailed account of Mercedes Mone and Hangman Page winning the Women's and Men's Owen Hart Cups or Toni Storm's victory over Mina Shirakawa. There's also a list of what the Wrestling Inc. staff loved and hated. Now it's time to break down the glorious and the inglorious, the noble and the ignoble. To put it simply, it's time to break down the Winners and Losers from the big show.

In some cases, the Winner might have in fact been a winner, and in other cases, some losers looked better in defeat than their opponents. Such is the case in the show business world of Professional Wrestling.

Not since St. John of the Cross himself has a person been so lost in a Dark Night of the Soul like Hangman Page. The past year or so has been a brutal time for fans of Cowboy S***, as Hangman Page has spiraled into rage and villainy, committing acts such as arson and the various crimes he and Swerve committed in their controversial deathmatches. Swerve's ascension in the last year and a half came at the expense of Hangman, who soon found himself a nothing man with nothing to lose. It had seemed like Page was starting to fade away, a relic of the days of Cody Rhodes and BTE. Then came the Owen Hart Cup.

Page has made it clear through the tournament, and especially through the build to the final match against Will Ospreay, that he "needed" to win the Cup. He "needed" the redemption that dethroning Jon Moxley could bring. Page and Ospreay had a match for the ages, which was not surprising to anyone who has been watching the two men's output over the last few years, but the fact that Hangman was able to best Ospreay shocked many. The company has seemingly revolved around Will Ospreay since he signed, much in the way that it did around Hangman in the early days of AEW. Hangman overcoming the new kid on the block was no small feat, and with Darby Allin currently somewhere on the slow descent from Mt. Everest, Page is the only one around who has any semblance of "AEW loyalty" left to defeat the cagey Jon Moxley.

Time will tell if Page will actually succeed where those like Swerve and Samoa Joe have failed, but being a cowboy, heading into a big event in Texas might keep him on the right side of the pinfall.

I've said this before, but what is to be done about Daniel Garcia?

Garcia has been touted as "the next big thing" for ages, much like Ricky Starks, and after many factions and a middling AEW TNT Title run, it feels like he has been stuck, spinning his wheels. Garcia is a lot like a gifted child who was praised, propped up, and pressured, assuming the pressure would turn him into a diamond, it has instead crushed him into dust.

When the Double or Nothing tag match between Garcia, Nigel McGuinness, and FTR was booked, I assumed that McGuinness and Garcia were on a collision course, one that would fulfill the promise that so many see in Garcia. It's possible they still are, but it really seems like it was more about FTR getting the win over two sentimental favorites than it was about advancing Garcia in any conceivable way. I do not doubt that McGuinness and Garcia will have a nice little feud somewhere down the road, but after the way Double or Nothing turned out, I'm worried there's no room for Garcia to rise in the aftermath. He could be looking at a long road to a possible inclusion in the Continental Classic, and even then, his current trajectory gives me no hope even that could go in his favor.

What is left to be said? What can I ask that wasn't already asked in last month's Dynasty winners and losers? I am running out of ways to be disappointed in Daniel Garcia and that feels like the biggest disappointment of all.

It feels like AEW has spent all of Mercedes Mone's tenure trying to ignore the obvious: She is the biggest star in the company's women's division by a country mile, and thanks to her win over Jamie Hayter, AEW no longer has to pretend Mercedes Mone isn't one of the biggest names in women's wrestling.

Luckily, in that time, AEW has been able to make "Timeless" Toni Storm into enough of a star to obfuscate the glaring gap. The TBS Championship and the AEW Women's World Championship have swapped stature back and forth, putting them on as level a playing field as possible. It's been a kind of dance between the two titles.

With her win on Sunday, Mone is making her move to center stage. It's been an inevitable moment, but admittedly a welcome one. AEW could probably make some waves if they were able to go All In on a double champion like Mone, pun intended. She's like a coiled spring, ready to explode, and while Storm's run has been the stuff of legend, every legend has to end.

The inevitable coronation of Mercedes Mone will also unclog the division, as bouncing between the two titles has led to a multitude of women, like Willow Nightingale, ROH Women's Champion Athena, and others left on the verge of true stardom, often sacrificed for either Mone's or Storm's momentum.

I love a good, stupid plunder match as much as the next guy, but I am growing a little weary of Anarchy In The Arena. One of the signature matches of AEW has grown a bit repetitive. Much like the Hell In A Cell stipulation, there was a time when a company could build a whole show around the match, but now it is merely a mid-show car crash, eating up time, and popping bubble wrap.

There's nothing wrong with bubble wrap, there's just nothing to do once you've popped it. Like the Anarchy In The Arena matches that preceded it, Sunday's entry was a lot of bubble wrap and not a lot of substance. 

It's not that I didn't enjoy the mayhem. It's not that I didn't love seeing Hook return. It's just that I struggle to see what anyone gains from these matches anymore, if they ever did in the first place. It rarely even feels like the matches carry any long-term stakes. It is possible that the most consequential AITA match remains the one that put Bryan Danielson on the injured list during his "final run" in AEW. 

Especially on something as laborious as a marathon AEW PPV, there comes a certain time where a match like this starts to grate on the nerves. These matches are too violent, and have caused too many injuries, to be this much of a slog. It might be time to give anarchy a rest.